Smoke and Mirrors

Having written to my brother-in-law in the US, I thought it would make a decent blog post…

Good to hear from you Pete & I do owe you an email although, in this job I am fully utilising my 7,000 word daily allowance of words for males, especially as many of the words have several syllables and are hard to understand even though I say them!

Note: women have 21,000 words (allegedly) and since 2/3 of my staff are women I do have to have to go into semantic overdraft on a daily basis.
I agree with you about the importance of measuring change & I am equally curious to discover just how the school, under my headship, is progressing.  However, it is a delicate balancing act and to many yardsticks and too many new initiatives will get in the way of actually letting change happen.  I know, against my natural inclination, I have not started with all guns blazing.  As I said to Robin: Take a deep breath & a step back.  The people who are going to enact change are the staff & to make change acceptable and achievable the direction of change has to be familiar and recognisable by them.  At least at the start, as the teams get used to the idea of change.  At the moment I am concentrating on upskilling, training and professional development opportunities.  These are the tools that we will all need to approach change in the future.  To paraphrase Diana Ross, as covered by Phil Collins, “You Can’t Hurry Change”!

If you want to play with some exciting tools have a look at this collection of bookmarks:

http://del.icio.us/neil_jones68/web2.0

In fact the del.icio.us website is interesting as a place to store bookmarks.  Also digg, stumbleupon & reddit.  You may also want to try netvibes, igoogle & facebook (don’t be afraid!).

Anyhow, I now know I’ve got enough to publish on my blog, thanks!

How far will XU get?  Final 4?  Does anyone actually watch basketball anymore?  Isn’t it like Ice Hockey?

How are the Bearcats football team shaping up for the new season?

As an aide memoire, here is the Charity Commission’s timetable for its public benefit guidance.

I think not.  And I would like to try to redress the balance.

This article - Private school pupil numbers in decline | Schools special reports | EducationGuardian.co.uk - must be read very carefully.  And even the Guardian’s own analysis suggests quite the opposite.

Take these quotes:

…demographic factors mean the 431,650 fee-paying pupils are a marginally higher proportion of the school population than they were in 2004.

 So are numbers at Independent Schools in decline?  In real terms yes but just because there are fewer school-age children in the population doesn’t mean that independent schools are under any kind of threat.  In actual fact our “market share” has risen.  This article from the BBC - Private Schools’ Market Share Up - is an excellent counterpoint.  However:

 …stability among families able to afford private education means that independent secondary school numbers have remained almost constant, while there has been a fall of about 6,000 in primary.

There in lies the rub.  We have known for sometime that the next 10 years will see a marked demographic shift, with proportionally fewer children being born, which will impinge up the Primary Independent schools first.

I posted an item on this in May 2005, when the Guardian was then on about rising school fees.  Back then, the link between fees and falling numbers was again a tenuous one as the Maintained Sector was experiencing a greater drop in numbers relative to the Independent Sector.

So the point is?  While the statistics appear threatening, it is articles such as this that are potentially damaging to the stability of the relationship between schools and their parent bodies and prospective parents.  We don’t need headlines like this.  It patently does not give the real picture.

The ISC’s blog has a post on the proposed regualtory changes that would essentially put independent schools’ inspections in the hands of OfSTED.  To quote the blog:

In essence, the proposals will mean that Ofsted, rather than the Secretary of State, becomes accountable for regulating the whole independent sector. That doesn’t mean inspecting schools directly. That area will remain with The Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). But it would mean that Ofsted would become the interpreter of regulation for the ISI and therefore dictate the inspection agenda.  

 However, if you take a moment to read through the proposals, what is on the table is a system whereby independent schools have the opportunity to prove the quality of there provision on a far more regular basis.  We are, at present, inspected every 6 years by ISI.  Under the new proposals we will be inspected every 3 years for a shorter period of time (the 2-3 day model: the light touch, critical friend approach), following the guidelines set out for maintained sector schools. 

As a governor of a small mainatined sector school and a deputy head at a large independent prep I have experienced both forms of inspection.  The streamlined model used by OfSTED lasts 3 days and is customised through the use of self-evaluation data.  This opportunity to regulary go through a self-evaluation process is a far more professional tool for school management in the 21st century.  It ensures that staff are continually aware of development goals and focused on maintaining standards in learning and teaching.

Centralised control is anathema to Independent Education.  However, by ensuring that we have an effective and efficient process of inspection and review then we can become far more confident of our standards in the wider educational world. 

This is an event that, if it hasn’t already begun its descent, will surely get the ball rolling.

The Symposium on Public Benefit on March 6th 2008 will hopefully all bring us up to speed on the guidance for fee-charging chaities.  Hopefully it will also give independent school managers a chance to network & find out just what each other is up to & share some good ideas!

The ever watchful Andy Ross has written about the contradictory reports emerging from the Press & the Government.  From Andy’s Blog:

Newspapers: One in seven children are unable to write their own name or recite the letters of the alphabet by the age of five, according to government figures.  The results, based on teachers’ observations of more than 500,000 children throughout England as they start their formal schooling, also concluded that a third failed to recognise simple words such as “dog” or “pen”, while 15% could not write “mum” or “dad” or their own name from memory.

Government: This year’s Foundation Stage Profile (FSP) results show an upturn in the number of children reaching a good level of development in communication, language and literacy and personal, social and emotional development (PSED). The total has increased by one percentage point from last year to 45%, meaning that an additional 7,500 children achieved a good level of development this year.

So what is reality?  How is a school to respond when parents, Governors & teachers are being fed such contradictory & inflamatory information?   For me it is down to clear communication about the situation on the ground.  That all agents within the community are clear about how its own children are coping under the weight of expectation with which they are saddled today.  So it is a case of being aware of the spin from both Government and the press and providing a transparent window on what the school is up to.

As somewhat of an pedagogy anorak (if the term doesn’t exist, I’ve just invented it) I love to visit other schools & talk to teachers about teaching.  I’ve found that teachers love to talk about teaching, but oftentimes they can only talk to eachother!  On the odd occasion that you can talk to a lay person about education, that other person is usually a less than impressed parent and the finer points of pedagogic philosphy are somewhat secondary considerations.

Last week I visited Cincinnati Country Day School, one of the biggest Private schools in Cincinnati.  There, I was able to talk to school leaders and discuss their views on school development, marketing (it is the private sector) and management.  What has always impressed me about schools in the United States, both public & private, is the overwhelming centrality that they possess.  Families commit to the lives of their children at school through varied and inventive fund-raising initiatives, innumerable social events throughout the year and, of course, the support of their representative sports teams.

The support of the school’s community is essential.  And, as US schools typify, it is the drive exhibited by the school itself that generates the enthusiasm amongst the parent body that then becomes infectious and pervasive.  Once that is established it is only too easy to recruit the volunteers necessary to organise the PTA events that are so crucial to the life of any school.

This article from the Guardian - How To Ride Out A Media Storm - caught my attention.  Is there really anything more difficult to cope with as a school manager than the day that a serious incident at your school precipates a feeding frenzy by the news media?

How to cope?  Well, as Mike Baker sums up in the article:

The lesson from these cases is that, however unfair a story may be, it’s not a good idea to try to shut the media out and that, in the 24-hour media age, early impressions are vital.

Well he would, wouldn’t he?  We just have to hope that we are not caught by a media snooping around for a scoop.  Then that would be unfair.

So the new term begins.  And it is not with the air of hope and optimism that we know teachers do bring to their new classes.  Straight away the media have laid into the profession and putting pressure on our creaking and overloaded education system.

Mike Baker, writing for the BBC says:

This week, though, how many teachers are going to be slinking back to school, fearful of the response to “their” exam results?

Combine this with the news that >Ed Balls has written to all heads to ask them to tighen up their ships and one gets a picture of a September that is pretty bleak.

But perhaps we need to be beware of the media spin. To read the press one can only feel that teachers and school leaders are under enormous pressure to perform and is a reality of the contemporary picture of education. However, reading beyond the hype, I am starting to believe more strongly than ever that the pressure comes from without.

Yet this pressure ought not to be laid at the door of the teachers at the chalkface. Good management and school governance can help to ringfence a school from these external pressures. Teachers facilitating learning as they see fit, ensuring that all pupils can achieve clearly defined goals, is surely the bottom line. It is a question of the rhetoric of the press versus the reality of our daily experience as educators.

Time for a little blogging synthesis.  As I was taught a long time ago, blogging is all about grabbing ideas and putting them together in a coherent manner.

Andy Ross (Primary Teacher UK) has pointed out the Staying Safe consultation under the Social Care, Welfare, Protection element of Every Child Matters.  As the website states…

Staying Safe is a major consultation, which provides the opportunity for the government to consult with parents, children, young people, our partners and the children’s workforce on children’s safety.

Ed Balls’, in a recent Guardian Online article, asserts that

Childhood is a time for learning and exploring. Through playing and doing positive activities, children and young people can learn to better understand the opportunities and challenges in the world around them, and how to be safe.

And then I found this on YouTube:

 

Should we be ashamed, as teachers, if we prevent children from being physically active when not in a structured PE lesson?

With the wrap-around care of extended schools, the question begs: with whom is the responsibilty of encouraging the “playing and positive activities”.  With parents?  Not if extended schools become popular?  With schools?  Not if the ECM consultation puts more health & safety hurdles in the way. 

So, if we want our children to be children, to grow through play & exploration, what is to be gained from the organisation of an end of year ball for 7-year-olds?  Where is the time within childhood to explore the world in a more physical way?   We are in danger of allowing our children to withdraw into their heads.  Less competitive sport, greater connectivity through ICT, less parental involvement, higher academic targets, fewer Outdoor Education experiences all lead to the evolution of intelligent but incomplete individuals.  Feed the mind, yes, but not at the expense of the body.

However, as we celebrate 100 years of scouting, perhaps we should take a leaf out of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys Manual (on lifesaving skills)…

Plunge in boldly and look to the object you are trying to attain and don’t bother about your own safety.